Alfred P. Sloan Grants

For over a decade, Film Independent and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation together have encouraged filmmakers to create more realistic and accurate stories about science and technology to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers in the popular imagination.

Projects eligible for support through Film Independent’s Sloan program feature scientific, mathematical or technological themes, or have a lead character that is a scientist, engineer or mathematician. Science fiction films or documentaries are not eligible for Sloan foundation grants.

Past recipients of Film Independent’s Sloan grants include The Man Who Knew Infinity, Valley of Saints, Future Weather and The House of Tomorrow. Some well-known examples of films and TV series with stories inspired by science include Silicon Valley, Hidden Figures, The Theory of Everything,The Big Bang Theory and Scrubs.

Film Independent supports Sloan-eligible projects at various stages:

Development

A $10,000 Episodic Lab Grant is awarded to a Sloan-eligible project in the Episodic Lab.

A $30,000 Producing Lab Grant is awarded to a Sloan-eligible project in the Producing Lab.

Development/Pre-Production

A $20,000 Fast Track Grant is awarded to a Sloan-eligible project in the Fast Track finance market.

Post-Production

Each of the Sloan grantees in an Artist Development program are paired with a Science Advisor who will review their project and advise the grantee on their project from a scientific perspective. All Sloan grantees are featured on the Sloan Science and Film website, an online publication presented by the Museum of the Moving Image.

About the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

The New York-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, founded in 1934, makes grants in science, technology and economic performance. Sloan’s program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, directed by Doron Weber, supports books, radio, ﬁlm, television, theater and new media to reach a wide, non-specialized audience.

Sloan’s Film Program encourages ﬁlmmakers to create more realistic and compelling stories about science and technology and to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers in the popular imagination. Over the past two decades, Sloan has partnered with some of the top ﬁlm schools in the country–including AFI, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, NYU, UCLA and USC–and established annual awards in screenwriting and ﬁlm production, along with an annual best-of-the-best Student Grand Jury Prize administered by the Tribeca Film Institute. The Foundation also supports screenplay development programs with the Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, SFFILM, the Black List, the Athena Film Festival, and Film Independent’s Producing Lab and Fast Track program and has helped develop over 25 feature films such as Jessica Oreck’s One Man Dies a Million Times, Michael Tyburski’s The Sound of Silence, Shawn Snyder’s To Dust, Ben Lewin’s The Catcher Was a Spy, Melissa Finell’s Sensitivity Training, Logan Kibens and Sharon Greene’s Operator, Mathew Brown‘s The Man Who Knew Inﬁnity, Michael Almereyda’s Experimenter, Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game, Marni Zelnick’s Druid Peak, Musa Syeed’s Valley of Saints, and Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess. The Foundation’s book program includes support for Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures, adapted into an Oscar-nominated box office hit in 2017.

For more information about the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, please visit www.sloan.org.